


Vertical Plate

by toujours_nigel



Category: Return to Night - Mary Renault, The Charioteer - Mary Renault
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Head Injury, Major Character Injury, POV Outsider, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-08
Updated: 2015-05-08
Packaged: 2018-03-29 16:05:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,013
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3902395
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/toujours_nigel/pseuds/toujours_nigel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>For the prompt, "husband in coma", for certain values of husbands and comas.</p>
    </blockquote>





	Vertical Plate

**Author's Note:**

  * For [oonaseckar](https://archiveofourown.org/users/oonaseckar/gifts).



> For the prompt, "husband in coma", for certain values of husbands and comas.

In any other year, it would have been news. Or even in that year in a quieter place. The Straikes might have lunched out on it for a month. In Bridstowe General in wartime, it settled with barely a ripple.

Hilary Mansell, coming upon the unfortunate man near the bridge, thanked fate her sudden appearance had startled him enough that the bullet clipped instead of piercing the frontal squama, and took cool possession of his car. It was barely morning, and she had risen from a newly-empty bed and decided to walk off the usual megrims that characterized the end of Julian’s too-short visits. Now a man might live for it.

“I don’t think he’ll thank me, though.”

Julian, though wrung of much of his self-absorbed naiveté, would still have felt duty-bound to protest the inherent selfishness of such a gesture in wartime. Deacon thinned his lips and nodded, and went on with his work. “I suppose he cracked, poor man,” he ventured after a while. “A pilot friend of mine was on the verge, but the decision was taken out of his hands. It must be some consolation to the parents.”

“They’re criminally short-handed,” she agreed, and took a punishingly large gulp of the tea. Hardly any of them knew about Julian, and she suspected Deacon was the curious type, dangerous because not overly so. “But this man wasn’t a pilot. RNVR, from the I.D.”

“Not in uniform, then?”

“Perhaps he thought it would be an insult,” Hilary said. The sort of man it took to think of these things was exactly the sort who would tuck himself into an unobtrusive corner and spread a sheet over his upholstery before putting a bullet through his brain.

“What was his name?” When she looked up at that, he laughed a little, very falsely. “I know it’s rather rude, but one does hear such stories, and I’m friends with some people in the service. If I don’t find the name familiar I shan’t circulate it.”

Under the easy swagger, he had paled. Twenty-five, Hilary thought, and not many months more. There was a structure in place for the men in active service, however shoddy. For them who were left behind, nothing. She would never tell Julian, but she had had hopes of that fall from horseback. “R. R. Lanyon,” she said, and watched.

Too young, that was the problem. In another few, he would develop enough of a manner to hide all disappointments behind. He tried gamely, though; Hilary wouldn’t undertake to deliver such nonchalance in the event of news about Julian. She had to get him away before anyone else saw the terrible, naked face, worse because Deacon was trying so hard to hit a balance between indifferent stranger and devastated lover, and blindly missing concerned relation and grieving friend.

“We’ll go out and smoke,” she said, and stood to tow him along. “Get yourself together.”

The matertal touch worked, she flattered herself, even among students who by rights should be well-removed from their scrubby schoolboy selves, but the depressing truth probably had more to do with the fact that she outweighed him by a good few pounds. In her grip the bones of his forearm felt brittle, nearly delicate.

They went to the desolate little chapel, Alec threading through the maze with blind instinct rather than faith, and changing course trustingly at the last instant to follow her outside. The sun was well-up, and doing nothing to dispel the miserable cold. She ought to have remembered to grab jackets.

After the second cigarette, Deacon said, “Will he live?” It wasn’t the question of someone training to be a surgeon. After a moment Deacon ducked his head and said, “I suppose it’s no use me telling you he’s the friend of a friend, or that I know him from school?”

“If you like. No visitors, of course, but if you come in at the end of my shift you can take a quick look.”

“He went through Dunkirk,” he said. “Ralph. His ship sank on the third outward trip, all hands drowned but him. I know it doesn’t matter to you, but you’ve got to know he wasn’t a coward. Isn’t. Afterwards he was bad for a while, but he was in hospital, and they were stranding him. He was better, the last few months.”

“Are you excusing him or yourself?”

“Myself, I suppose. I should have kept a closer eye on him, but we fought and he had a new boyfriend and I thought...” He stopped short and stared dully at the stub still caught between his fingers. “I can hear him in my head, you know, shouting _Alec are you out of your damned mind spilling our secrets_. I suppose I’ll care again about all of that, quite soon.”

“Go home and sleep,” Hilary said, with something of the voice she had used on over-fertile men in the Cottage Hospital. “You were going off-shift and we’ve all been pulling doubles. If he wakes there will be plenty for you to do alongside your other work.”

“If he doesn’t, much the same,” Deacon said, and nodded wearily. “I’ve got to call on some people before I go.”

“Do you have someone who’ll see you to your place?”

“I’ll take the bus. I’ll be fine. Thank you,” he said, with the slight formality of better-behaved relatives, “for telling me.”

“He’s not dead yet,” she said, and stung into disclosure by his resigned smile, added, “that’s how I met my husband, he was thrown from a horse and I treated him.”

“And now he’s a pilot,” Deacon said, still smiling falsely. “Truly, an age of miracles.” He ducked in through the chapel.

Hilary lit a third cigarette. Deacon, usually obsessively neat, had littered the pavement with his stubs. She bent a little stiffly to pocket them. It had been a cold morning, and she had moved rather more swiftly than entirely sensible. He might turn into a vegetable yet if he didn’t die outright. But by then it would fall to someone else.


End file.
